CHAPTER XIII

THE SMOOT EXPOSURE

Just before the subpoenas were issued in the Smoot investigation,
I met John R. Winder (then First Councillor to President Smith) on the street in
Salt Lake City, and he expressed the hope that when I went "to Washington on the
Smoot case," I would not "betray" my "brethren." I assured him that I was not going
to Washington as a witness in the Smoot case; that the men whom he should warn,
were at Church headquarters. He replied, with indignant alarm, " I don't see what
'the brethren' have to do with this!"

But when the subpoenas arrived for Smith and the hierarchy, alarm
and indignation assumed a new complexion. The authorities, for themselves, and through
the mouths of such men as Brigham H. Roberts, began to boast of how they were about
to "carry the gospel to the benighted nation" and preach it from the witness stand
in Washington. The Mormon communities resounded with fervent praises to God that
He had, through His servant, Apostle Smoot, given the opportunity to His living
oracles to speak to an unrighteous people! And when the Senators decided that they
would not summon polygamous wives and their children en bloc to Washington
to testify (because it was not desired to "make war on women and children") some
of Joseph F. Smith's several wives even complained feelingly that they "were not
allowed to testify for Papa."

The first oracular disclosure made by the Prophets, on the witness
stand, came as a shock even to Utah. They testified that they had resumed polygamous
cohabitation to an extent unsuspected by either Gentiles or Mormons. President Joseph
F. Smith admitted that he had had eleven children borne to him by his five wives,
since pledging himself to obey the "revealed" manifesto of 1890 forbidding polygamous
relations. Apostle Francis Marion Lyman, who was next in succession to the Presidency,
made a similar admission of guilt, though in a lesser degree. So did John Henry
Smith and Charles W. Penrose, apostles. So did Brigham H. Roberts and George Reynolds,
Presidents of Seventies. So did a score of others among the lesser authorities.
And they confessed that they were living in polygamy in violation of their pledges
to the nation and the terms of their amnesty, against the laws and the constitution
of the state, and contrary to the "revelation of God" by which the doctrine of polygamy
had been withdrawn from practice in the Church!

President Joseph F. Smith admitted that he was violating the
law of the State. He was asked: "Is there not a revelation that you shall abide
by the law of the State and of the land?" He answered, "Yes, sir." He was asked:
"And if that is a revelation, are you not violating the laws of God?" He answered:
"I have admitted that, Mr. Senator, a great many times here."

Apostle Francis Marion Lyman was asked: "You say that you, an
apostle of your Church, expecting to succeed (if you survive Mr. Smith) to the office
in which you will be the person to be the medium of Divine revelations, are living,
and are known to your people to live, in disobedience of the law of the land and
the law of God?" Apostle Lyman answered: "Yes, sir." The others pleaded guilty to
the same charge.

But this was not the worst. There had been new polygamous marriages.
Bishop Chas. E. Merrill, the son of an apostle, testified that his father had married
him to a plural wife in 1891, and that he had been living with both wives ever since.
A Mrs. Clara Kennedy testified that she had been married to a polygamist in 1896,
in Juarez, Mexico, by Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., in the home of the president of
the stake. There was testimony to show that Apostle George Teasdale had taken a
plural wife six years after the "manifesto" forbidding polygamy, and that Benjamin
Cluff, Jr., president of the Church university, had taken a plural wife in 1899.
Some ten other less notorious cases were exposed-including those of M. W. Merrill,
an apostle, and J. M. Tanner, superintendent of Church schools. It was testified
that Apostle John W. Taylor had taken two plural wives within four years, and that
Apostle M. F. Cowley had taken one; and both these men had fled from the country
in order to escape a summons to appear before the Senate committee.

President Joseph F. Smith, in his attempts to justify his own
polygamy, gave some very involved and contradictory testimony. He said that he adhered
to both the divine revelation commanding polygamy and the divine revelation "suspending"
the command. He said he believed that the principle of plural marriage was still
as "correct a principle" as when first revealed, but that the "law commanding it"
had been suspended by President Woodruff's manifesto. He said that he accepted President
Woodruff's manifesto as a revelation from God, but he objected to having it called
"a law of the Church;" he insisted that it was only "a rule of the Church." He admitted
that the manifesto forbidding polygamy had never been printed among the other revelations
in the Church's book of "Doctrine and Covenants," in which the original revelation
commanding polygamy was still printed without note or qualification of any kind.

He admitted that this anti-polygamy manifesto was not printed
in any of the other doctrinal works which the Mormon missionaries took with them
when they were sent out to preach the Mormon faith. He claimed that the manifesto
was circulated in pamphlet form, but he subsequently admitted that the pamphlet
did not "state in terms" that the manifesto was a "revelation." He finally pleaded
that the manifesto had been omitted from the book of "Doctrine and Covenants" by
an "oversight," and he promised to have it included in the next edition![1]

In short, it was shown, by the testimony given and the evidence
introduced, not only that the Church authorities persisted in living in polygamy,
not only that polygamous marriages were being contracted, but that the Church still
adhered to the doctrine of polygamy and taught it as a law of God.

President Joseph F. Smith denied the right of Congress to regulate
his "private conduct" as a polygamist. "It is the law of my state to which I am
amenable," he said, "and if the officers of the law have not done their duty toward
me I can not blame them. I think they have some respect for me."

A mass of testimony showed why the officers of the law did not
do their duty. During the anti-polygamy agitation of 1899 (which ended in the refusal
of Congress to seat Brigham H. Roberts) a number of prosecutions of polygamists
had been attempted. In many instances the county attorney had refused to prosecute
even upon sworn information. Wherever prosecutions were had, the fines imposed were
nominal; these were in some cases never paid, and in other cases paid by popular
subscription. It was testified that in Box Elder County subscription lists had been
circulated to collect money for the fines, but that the fines were never paid, though
the subscriptions had been collected. All the prosecutions had been dropped, at
last. It was pleaded that there was a strong Gentile sentiment against these prosecutions,
because of the hope that no new polygamous marriages were being contracted; but
it was shown also, that the Church authorities controlled the enforcement of the
law by their influence in the election of the agents of the law.

The Church controlled, too, the making of the law. For example,
testimony was given to show that in 1896 the Church authorities had appointed a
committee of six elders to examine all bills introduced into the Utah legislature
and decide which were "proper" to be passed. In the neighboring state of Idaho,
the legislature, in 1904, unanimously and without discussion passed a resolution

for a new state constitution that should omit the anti-polygamy
test oath clauses objectionable to the Mormons; and in this connection it was testified
that the state chairman of both political parties in Idaho always went to Salt Lake
City, before a campaign, to consult with the Church authorities; that every request
of the authorities made to the Idaho political leaders was granted; that six of
the twenty-one countries in Idaho were "absolutely controlled" by Mormons, and the
"balance of power" in six counties more was held by Mormons; and that it was "impossible
for any man or party to go against the Mormon Church in Idaho." Apostle John Henry
Smith testified that one-third of the population of Idaho was Mormon and one-fourth
of the population of Wyoming, and that there were large settlements in Nevada, Colorado,
California, Arizona and the surrounding states and territories.

A striking example of the power of the Church as against the
power of the nation was given to the Senate committee by John Nicholson, chief recorder
of the temple in Salt Lake City. He had failed to produce some of the temple marriage
records for which the committee had called. He was asked whether he would bring
the books, on the order of the Senate of the United States, if the First Presidency
of the Church forbade him to bring them. He answered: "I would not." He was asked:
"And if the Senate should send the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate and arrest you
and order you to bring them" (the records) "with you, you would still refuse to
bring them, unless the First Presidency asked you to?" He answered, "Yes, sir."

It was shown that classes of instruction in the Mormon religion
had been forced upon teachers in a number of public schools in Utah by the orders
of the First Presidency. (These orders were withdrawn after the exposure before
the committee.) Church control had gone so far in Brigham City, Box Elder County,
Utah, that in a dispute between the City Council and the electric lighting company
of the city, the local ecclesiastical council interfered. In the same city, two
young men built a dancing pavilion that competed with the Church-owned Opera House;
the ecclesiastical council "counselled" them to remove the pavilion and dispose
of "the material in its construction;" they were threatened that they would be "dropped"
if they did not obey this "counsel;" and they compromised by agreeing to pay twenty-five
percent of the net earnings of their pavilion into the. Church's "stake treasury."
In Monroe ward, Sevier County, Utah, in 1901, a Mormon woman named Cora Birdsall
had a dispute with a man named James E. Leavitt about a title to land. Leavitt went
into the Bishop's court and got a decision against her. She wrote to President Joseph
F. Smith for permission either to appeal the case direct to him or "to go to law"
in the matter; and Smith advised her "to follow the order provided of the Lord to
govern in your case." The dispute was taken through the ecclesiastical courts and
decided against her. She refused to deed the land to Leavitt and she was excommunicated
by order of the High Council of the Sevier Stake of Zion. She became insane as a
result of this punishment, and her mother appealed to the stake president to grant
her some mitigation. He wrote, in reply: "Her only relief will be in complying with
President Smith's wishes. You say she has never broken a rule of the Church. You
forget that she has done so by failing to abide by the decision of the mouthpiece
of God." She finally gave up a deed to the disputed land and was rebaptized in 1904.
(Letters of the First Presidency were, however, introduced to show that it had been
the policy of the presidency-particularly in President Woodruff's day-not
to interfere in disputes involving titles to land.)

It was testified that a Mormon merchant was expelled from the
Church, ostensibly for apostasy, but really because he engaged in the manufacture
of salt "against the interests of the President of the Church and some of his associates;"
that a Mormon Church official was deposed "for distributing, at a school election,
a ticket different from that prescribed by the Church authorities"-and so on, interminably.

Witness after witness swore to the incidents of Church interference
in politics which this narrative has already related in detail. But no attempt was
made to show the Church's partnership with the "interests;" and the power of the
Church in business circles was left to be inferred from President Smith's testimony
that he was then president of the Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution, the
State Bank of Utah, the Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company, the Utah Sugar Company,
the Consolidated Wagon and Machine Company, the Utah Light and Power Company, the
Salt Lake and Los Angeles Railroad Company, the Saltair Beach Company, the Idaho
Sugar Company, the Inland Crystal Salt Company, the Salt Lake Knitting Company,
and the Salt Lake Dramatic Association; and that he was a director of the Union
Pacific Railway Company, vice-president of the Bullion-Beck and Champion Mining
Company, and editor of the Improvement Era and the Juvenile Instructor.

It was shown that Utah had not been admitted to statehood until
the Federal government had exacted, from the Church authorities and the representatives
of the people of Utah, every sort of pledge that polygamy had been forever abandoned
and polygamous relations discontinued by "revelation from God"; that statehood had
not been granted until solemn promise had been given and provision made that there
should be "no union of church and state," and no church should "dominate the state
or interfere with its functions;" and that the Church's escheated property had been
restored upon condition that such property should be used only for the relief of
the poor of the Church, for the education of its children and for the building and
repair of houses of worship "in which the rightfulness of the practice of polygamy"
should not be "inculcated."

Therefore the testimony given before the Senate committee by
these members of the Mormon hierarchy, showed that they had not only broken their
covenants and violated their oaths, but that they had been guilty of treason. What
was the remedy ? Jeremiah M. Wilson, a lawyer employed by the Church authorities
in 1888 to argue, before a Congressional committee, in behalf of the admission of
Utah to statehood, had pointed out the remedy in these words:

"It is idle to say that such a compact may be made, and then,
when the considerations have been mutually received-statehood on the one side and
the pledge not to do a particular thing on the other-either party can violate it
without remedy to the other. But you ask me what is the remedy, and I answer that
there are plenty of remedies in your own hands.

"Suppose they violate this compact; suppose that after they put
this into the constitution, and thereby induce you to grant them the high privilege
and political right of statehood, they should turn right around and exercise the
bad faith which is attributed to them here-what would you do? You could shut the
doors of the Senate and House of Representatives against them; you could deny them
a voice in the councils of this nation, because they have acted in bad faith and
violated their solemn agreement by which they succeeded in getting themselves into
the condition of statehood. You could deny them the Federal judiciary; you could
deny them the right to use the mails-that indispensable thing in the matter of trade
and commerce of this country. There are many ways in which peaceably, but all powerfully,
you could compel the performance of that compact."

This argument by Mr. Wilson in 1888 was recalled by the counsel
for the protestants in the investigation. It was recalled with the qualification
that though Congress might not have the power to undo the sovereignty of the state
of Utah it could deal with Senator Smoot. And it was further argued: "The chief
charge against Senator Smoot is that he encourages, countenances, and connives at
the defiant violation of law. He is an integral part of a hierarchy; he is an integral
part of a quorum of twelve, who constitute the backbone of the Church. . . . He,
as one of that quorum of twelve apostles, encourages, connives at, and countenances
defiance of law."

On June 11, 1906, a majority of the committee made a report to
the Senate recommending that Apostle Smoot was not entitled to his seat in the Senate.
They found that he was one of a "self-perpetuating body of fifteen men, uniting
in themselves authority in both Church and state," who "so exercise this authority
as to encourage a belief in polygamy as a divine institution, and by both precept
and example encourage among their followers the practice of polygamy and polygamous
cohabitation;" that the Church authorities had "endeavored to suppress, and succeed
in suppressing, a great deal of testimony by which the fact of plural marriages
contracted by those who were high in the councils of the Church might have been
established beyond the shadow of a doubt;" and that "aside from this it was shown
by the testimony that a majority of those who give law to the Mormon Church are
now, and have been for years, living in open, notorious and shameless polygamous
cohabitation." Concerning President Woodruff's anti-polygamy manifesto of 1890,
the majority of the committee reported that "this manifesto in no way declares the
principle of polygamy to be wrong or abrogates it as a doctrine of the Mormon Church,
but simply suspends the practice of polygamy to be resumed at some more convenient
season, either with or without another revelation." They found that Apostle Smoot
was responsible for the conduct of the organization to which he belonged; that he
had countenanced and encouraged polygamy "by repeated acts and in a number of instances,
as a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles;" and that he was "no more entitled
to a seat in the Senate than he would be if he were associating in polygamous cohabitation
with a plurality of wives."

The report continued: "The First Presidency and the twelve apostles
exercise a controlling influence over the action of the members of the Church in
secular affairs as well as in spiritual matters;" and "contrary to the principles
of the common law under which we live, and the constitution of the State of Utah,
the First Presidency and twelve apostles dominate the affairs of the State and constantly
interfere in the performance of its functions. . . . But it is in political affairs
that the domination of the First Presidency and the twelve apostles is most efficacious
and most injurious to the interests of the State. . . . Notwithstanding the plain
provision of the constitution of Utah, the proof offered on the investigation demonstrates
beyond the possibility of doubt that the hierarchy at the head of the Mormon Church
has, for years past, formed a perfect union between the Mormon Church and the State
of Utah, and that the Church, through its head, dominates the affairs of the State
in things both great and small." And the report concluded: "The said Reed Smoot
comes here, not as the accredited representative of the State of Utah in the Senate
of the United States, but as the choice of the hierarchy which controls the Church
and has usurped the functions of the State in Utah. It follows, as a necessary conclusion
from these facts, that Mr. Smoot is not entitled to a seat in the Senate as a Senator
from the State of Utah."

On the same day a minority report was presented by Senators J.
B. Foraker, Albert J. Beveridge, Wm. P. Dillingham, A. J. Hopkins and P. C. Knox.
They found that Reed Smoot possessed "all the qualifications prescribed by the Constitution
to make him eligible to a seat in the Senate;" that "the regularity of his election"
by the Utah legislature had not been questioned; that his private character was
"irreproachable;" and that "so far as mere belief and membership in the Mormon Church
are concerned, he is fully within his rights and privileges under the guaranty of
religious freedom given by the Constitution of the United States." Having thus summarily
excluded all the large and troublesome points of the investigation, these Senators
decided that there remained "but two grounds on which the right or title of Reed
Smoot to his seat in the Senate" was contested. The first was whether he had taken
a certain "endowment oath" by which "he obligated himself to make his allegiance
to the Church paramount to his allegiance to the United States;" and the second
was whether "by reason of his official relation to the Church" he was "responsible
for polygamous cohabitation" among the Mormons. As to the first charge, the minority
found that the testimony upon the point was "limited in amount, vague and indefinite
in character and utterly unreliable, because of the disreputable character of the
witnesses "-oddly overlooking the fact that one of these witnesses had been called
for Apostle Smoot; that no attempt had been made to impeach the character
of this witness; that the other witnesses had been denounced, by a Mormon bishop,
named Daniel Connolly, as "traitors who had broken their oaths to the Church" by
betraying the secrets of the "endowment oath;" and that all the Smoot witnesses
who denied the anti-patriotic obligation of the oath refused, suspiciously enough,
to tell what obligation was imposed on those who took part in the ceremony.

The charge that Smoot, as an apostle of the Church, had been
responsible for polygamous cohabitation was as easily disposed of, by the minority
report. He had himself, on oath, "positively denied" that he had "ever advised any
person to violate the law either against polygamy or against polygamous cohabitation,"
and no witness had been produced to testify that Apostle Smoot had ever given "any
such advice" or defended "such acts." True, it was admitted that he had "silently
acquiesced" in the continuance of polygamous cohabitation by polygamists who had
married before 1890; but it was contended that to understand this acquiescence it
was "necessary to recall some historical facts, among which are some that indicate
that the United States government is not free from responsibility for these violations
of the law."

In short, although Reed Smoot was one of a confessed band of
law-breaking traitors, he was of "irreproachable" private character. Although the
band had been guilty of every treachery, none of the band had admitted that Smoot
had encouraged them in their villainies. Smoot had only "silently acquiesced"-and
in this he had been no guiltier than the intimidated bystanders and the gagged victims
of the outrages. Although the gang had stolen the machinery of elections and used
it to print a Senatorial certificate for Smoot, there was nothing to show that the
form of the certificate was not correct. Moreover, the band operated in politics
as a religious organization, and the constitution of the United States protects
a man in his right of religious freedom!

1 He did not keep his promise.
The manifesto was not added to the book of revelations until some time later, after
considerable protest in Utah.